


The Red Herring League

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS AUs [11]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:38:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: The SSSS crew as superheroes fighting the Rash.





	1. In the Company of Heroes

The Indre By, Copenhagen  
In the 90th Year of the Outbreak

Sigrun “the Red Terror” Eide finished off another grossling with a single, precise stab through its brain, her third kill in under a second. Behind her, her right-hand warrior, Emil “Firework” Västerström was using his pyrokinetic powers to roast another handful or so attempting to rush them.

_Whing!_ A nearby grossling’s head exploded. “Looks like the rest of the gang’s here,” Sigrun commented to Emil. “You might want to rein in the sparkles, for their sake.” Sigrun was invulnerable; the rest were not.

Emil concentrated on bringing his burn-BURN-burn-fire powers down to a safe level. As he did, the fountain of multicolored sparks concealing his head diminished until they became the customary sparkles glinting from his golden hair. “Is this okay?”

Sigrun shrugged. “It should be fine.”

Behind them, Mikkel “the Grave Dane” Madsen brought their Field Expeditionary Light INfantry OPerations Excursion DEvice to a halt. That he was at the controls meant that Lalli “Phantom Strike” Hotakainen wasn’t the one who’d sniped the last troll, but his cousin, “Super Tuuri” Hotakainen, or, as Emil liked to teasingly call her, “Mighty Mouse”.

Lalli was insanely fast and insanely stealthy; usually his kills were caught so off-guard as to bear bewilderment as their last expression. He was also a magnificent sniper.

Super Tuuri, as she insisted upon being addressed, had probability warping powers, as did her brother Onni, who never set foot away from home if he could help it, as he was also cursed with the ability to see the worst thing that could happen in any circumstance. Super Tuuri, however, could also fly, and shared her cousin’s aim.

Their final member, Reynir “the Helper” Árnason, was in the FELINOPEDE’s cabin with Mikkel, practically bouncing with his eagerness to get out there and help his friends. Mikkel’s chief power was to make anyone and everyone around him unnaturally glum, to the point of suicide in a few cases, but even at his most powerful, he couldn’t dampen Reynir’s spirits. It was commonly accepted by the team that Reynir getting depressed was one of the signs heralding the End of Everything.

Not that Everything didn’t seem to be Ending already. Ninety years ago, the Rash had swept across the world like a forest fire, the monsters it created hunting down those few who’d escaped it. This was when the first Heroes had arisen, a minuscule fraction of humanity that had the power to save what was left of it.

Even with the Heroes’ unceasing efforts, though, most of the world was in the grip of the grosslings. The Bastion of Amalienborg and the Forts of Kastellet and Kastrup were practically the only parts of Copenhagen held by humanity anymore, and even that spoke more of Danish stubbornness and valor than of grossling weakness.

The six of them had banded together at the behest of the Nordic Council, charged with defending (or hopefully Cleansing) the hard-pressed Danish holdouts in a show of Nordic solidarity, though not much of one. Sigrun had promptly christened the group “the Red Herring League”, as their purpose was much more distraction than anything else.

Super Tuuri whipped by, in search of more grosslings to snipe, and Emil waved as she passed. He both regretted and didn’t regret that he couldn’t fly, himself: no Hero who could fly was immune, and Emil liked to be as close as he could to his flames, as he kept them under better control that way.

“Don’t encourage Little Fuzzy-head, Burn-Boy,” Sigrun chided him gently. “So, lunch?” She gestured back at the FELINOPEDE, and they were off...


	2. Revenge of the Sludge

Lunchtime.

While most people looked forward to eating, Heroes had a decided ambivalence towards their mealtimes, mostly due to the diet necessitated by their powers. Simply put, Heroes went through so much energy so quickly that they had to eat stuff that was so nutrient-dense as to be lethal to ordinary folk.

By the Year 90, the “Heroes’ Feast” mixture was more or less standardized, though the individual chef preparing it always tried to mitigate the less-than-pleasant taste with various seasonings, some more successful than others. But still, the “Heroes’ Feast” was generally known to its consumers as “that inedible sludge”, almost always sulfurously and unprintably qualified.

A fly drifted into the fumes rising from Mikkel’s pot, seized up, and fell to the ground, dead. This was far from unusual; most of the time, the pot had to be kept covered to avoid random insects adding to the seasoning (“Not that they could make it taste any _worse_ ,” Sigrun once opined).

Altogether, there were around 300 Heroes, each consuming enough to keep a dozen normals alive, but each acknowledged to be worth 20-100 normals in battle. They were classified into two distinct groups: Type I (early onset), who were born with their powers or manifested them before puberty; and Type II (adult onset), who began developing powers at or after puberty.

Sigrun was a Type I: she’d killed her first grossling while literally still in her cradle. The vermin beast had killed the cat guarding the nursery in preparation for consuming Dalsnes’ future... and had picked the worst possible crib to start with.

Mikkel was a Type II: his first surge of power had made a whole quarantine ward commit suicide--and he’d never quite forgiven himself.

Lalli was another Type I, as his mother had been, so she was ready to deal with raising him--while his parents were still alive.

Emil was a Type I who had tried for years to pretend he wasn’t a Hero at all. Once his family wealth was lost, however, he soon found that the only way he could help was to let his abilities be known.

Tuuri, another Type II, had only started showing her powers two years prior, and she was still caught up in the excitement of becoming a Hero.

Reynir was a Type I, but his power was so subtle that no one had noticed: when he was near people trying to do something, it got done much faster and more easily than otherwise. In some inscrutable way, Reynir _Helped_.

Right now, Reynir was helping Mikkel dish out the sludge, “a thankless task”, as Mikkel called it (right before Reynir thanked Mikkel for allowing him to help). Each teammate got one heaping bowlful of sludge.

Mechanically munching on his, Emil thought wistfully of the meals he’d enjoyed as a child. Unlike most Type Is, he’d kept his powers so well hidden and disused that he’d been rather a pudgy child. His eyes closed as the memories took hold, and before he realized it, he’d fallen asleep.

Lalli looked up from his meal at a sudden chorus of snores. All around him, the others were slumped over their meals, unconscious, leaving Lalli their only sentry against the vengeful grosslings...


	3. Bubble, Bubbles, Everywhere

Trolls were _supposed_ to be more or less unique in their horrific mutations; so why were they under attack by half-a-dozen near-clones?

Lalli cursed fiercely under his breath as he knocked another weird blob of bloated, translucent brain matter off its ridiculously long legs. The giant volume of fluid around their brains would act as a horribly effective shield against bullets, so all Lalli could do to stop them was try to keep them down.

Were Sigrun or Emil awake, the fight would already have been over, but they and the others in the Red Herring League were still unconscious from whatever had been added to their sludge. Fortunately, Tuuri’s luck powers had kept Lalli awake, though he wished the luck had chosen someone else. He had barely managed to get the others into the FELINOPEDE before the attack; another pair of hands would have been most useful with that.

A huge, chopstick-like leg slammed down before Lalli, only just missing pinning him like a bug. The near miss shook Lalli; he should be moving much too quickly for the trolls to get anywhere _near_ that close, so he must be feeling the sludge’s effects himself.

Even as Lalli realized his increasing peril, he slowed more and more, until the half-dozen trolls had managed to surround him. Lalli wanted to run past them, but he was so... _tired_...

Just as the slight Finn wavered on his feet and one of the trolls raised a deceptively dainty foot for the killing blow, the troll burst into bright orange flames. Lalli managed to smile before his legs folded up beneath him. Very shortly thereafter, the conflagration had spread to the other trolls, and they were fleeing in utter panic as Emil half- (really mostly-) carried Lalli back to the FELINOPEDE.

The little calico kitten they’d rescued a few days ago mewled in confused apprehension as the two boys came in. All that was happening around her eluded her minute ability to comprehend, so she was getting scared.

“Where are those blasted Amalienborg troops?” Emil growled angrily as he closed the door. “Are they merely slow in coming to our aid, or did they surrender to cowardice?”

“Think... it’s... worse...” Mikkel mumbled from his position on the front passenger bench, his Danish rendered even less comprehensible than usual (to Emil, at least) by the fact that he was still mostly asleep. “They... helped... make... the sludge...”

“Y’think they’ve turned _Quisling_?” Sigrun asked through a huge yawn. “Why’d they go ’n’ do something like that?”

“Dunno,” Mikkel replied through a mammoth yawn of his own. “Not sure they have. Just saying they helped with the sludge.”

A snore from Tuuri interrupted him. Emil could feel his own eyelids drooping again, even as he watched Sigrun slide back from vertical to horizontal. Reynir and Lalli, safely ensconced on the floor, entered their own yawns into the growing chorus, but Emil struggled to stay conscious.

With the last of his strength, Emil barely managed to put the FELINOPEDE into LOCKDOWN mode before he joined the others in sleep...


	4. Cats As Cats Can

_Lalli slept, and as he slept, he dreamed_.

They were particularly random, incomprehensible, and above all frustrating dreams tonight; a whole menagerie danced through them, with each different animal demanding something new of him, while a red-tail laughed in the skies above.

Fortunately, Emil was there, but he was a dog, a squirrel, a seal--another whole menagerie. And the others pressed home their demands, forcing Lalli to _socialize_ \--to deal with stupid, stubborn, nattery-chattery _people_ who couldn’t just leave him be as he wanted. Still, Lalli was comforted by the presence of his best friend, even though they called each other different names in the dreams.

They went to Tuonela and back, always together, except when that infuriating red-tail ripped Emil-by-another-name away for a bit. When that happened, Lalli slumped into the waters of Tuonela, gloomily looking at the reflection that wasn’t Lalli Hotakainen at all--in looks, at least.

But it all worked out more or less all right. Lalli got to see Emil “kill” the red-tail, which was most cathartic. All the people quit bothering him, which was even better.

Then he and Emil were in a gigantic mechanical warrior, their minds linked together as they battled the monsters the Rash had spawned...

...only they were a painting in Lalli’s tatty old studio, waiting for Lalli to put the finishing touches on his latest creation...

...but Lalli was too busy hustling a weirdly-garbed Tuuri out of a tall cement building, while Emil fretted over how his explosives had knocked the safe they were supposed to open clear out into the street instead...

...Sick and fevered and _twisted_ and why couldn’t he have died when it caught him in the dreamworld--but no, because Emil was there, making the pain better and worse, keeping him human, and he was Lalli again, instead of the _näkki_ the Rash had made of him...

Lalli sat bolt upright with a gasp, sweat running down his face in rivulets. Barely a breath away from Lalli’s face, a large, glowing lynx stared at Lalli calmly, its unblinking eyes boring into his. So, his luonto had finally returned--but only after the ghost attack that could have killed all of them had been thwarted by Reynir and Onni. Stupid weird, foreign spirits.

Well, it was here now, anyway. They did the slow blink at each other, but a sudden noise had them both looking to see its cause.

A large, fearsome-looking lioness was meandering their way.

For a moment, Lalli thought it was Sigrun, or rather, whatever weird foreign equivalent of a luonto she would have. A moment’s consideration of the counter-indications--she wasn’t red, for one--brought the realization that this was, in fact, the kitten, as she saw herself. She proved this by coming right up to Lalli and his Lynx, chirping happily in greeting, and flopping down onto her back in a silent but pointed demand for a belly rub.

As Lalli was attending to Her Majesty, he looked over to where Emil sat, asleep. For a moment, the golden-haired Swede’s form shifted into that of a dog, then a somewhat pudgy red-head, before reforming into the softly flaming mass that was “the Firework”.

_Lalli “the Phantom Strike” slept on, knowing he would need the rest to face what was to come_...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featured in Lalli's dream were the following works:
> 
> By Minna Sundberg:  
> A Red-Tail’s Dream: http://www.minnasundberg.fi/artd.php
> 
> SSSS fanfics by SectoBoss:  
> Into the Storm: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3803176/  
> A World of Difference: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5353481/  
> Windy City Blues: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4964401/  
> The Cleanser and the Näkki: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4917124
> 
> Read them. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeead Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem.


	5. Heroes and Villains

“Platinum rosebud.”

A shiver went through the meat-moss stretching through the corridor, and the troll that had been preparing an ambush from the ceiling froze.

The man took another step forward confidently, a carefully measured single stride. “Impending retrograde.”

The twitching amongst the Rashed mass increased, an irregular pulsing of muscles warring with muscles.

Another step. “Dispraxis ascendant.”

One tendril made as if to strike at the man, but others grabbed it and held it back. The twitching was subsiding now.

“Discipline brings rewards.” The man pulled a freshly killed fox from the haversack slung over one shoulder and tossed the corpse behind him.

“Are you disciples?”

_“Yes”_

*

Quiet reigned within the FELINOPEDE as the night wore on.

Reynir was the first to awake, followed by Tuuri, Lalli, Sigrun, Mikkel, and finally Emil. They had slept for more than sixteen hours, all told, but why?

And why were they still alive?

“Well,” Sigrun opined, “whatever they did, they wanted us out of the way for it, which means we’re an obstacle to their getting what they want.”

“Unless they already got what they wanted and nothing we can do now will alter that,” Mikkel rumbled. “Otherwise, they should have killed us.”

“They should have killed us anyway,” Sigrun growled. “No one messes with me and lives to tell about it, and that goes double for my crew!” She looked at Tuuri and Reynir. “And triple for those on my crew who aren’t immune.”

Reynir was so _glad_ he was part of Sigrun’s crew; the Red Terror in a rage was, frankly, terrifying to behold. Then he looked at Emil, who was starting to smoulder, quite literally. The sparkles in Emil’s hair were getting ever more intense, showing why the Firework had been so named.

“Um, should we maybe take this discussion outside?”

Sigrun looked over at Emil. “Pull it back, Glim-Glam Guy.” When Emil looked cluelessly back at her, she amplified, “You’re getting too steamed for the company we keep. Not that I blame you.”

“But... How can we find out who did this?” Tuuri asked, puzzled.

“We start with the Sludge,” Mikkel answered.

*

The Amalienborg troops who had helped with the Sludge were unable to give any satisfactory answers, due to the decided inconvenience of their being dead. They had apparently been killed in the latest troll assault on Amalienborg, in a most unconvincing “coincidence”.

Ironically, Mikkel was undaunted by this reverse. He swiftly yet comprehensively examined the corpses, Lalli by his side; in the little knot with the others, Reynir squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated hard on _helping_. Their examination complete, the Finn and the Dane looked at each other for a long moment before turning to the others.

“Well, they were definitely murdered,” Mikkel said with his usual blunt honesty, not unmixed with regret in this instance. “Pretty clumsily done, too.”

Lalli added something in Finnish, which Tuuri hesitated before translating. “The weapon was like a Mora knife more than a pukko, but that’s pretty standard around here, so it could’ve been anyone but one of us.” None of them carried knives--or not standard ones, at least.

“Quislings got what they deserved,” Sigrun opined angrily.

“Yeah,” Emil agreed, “but it’s too bad we can’t wring the truth out of them, nonetheless.”

“They _might_ have something of value to tell us yet,” Mikkel mused...


	6. Interlude in Scarlet

The grossling onslaught began before the sun had even mostly set, beginning with, of all things, a Sjødraug awkwardly lumbering after the FELINOPEDE as Super Tuuri drove along what was once a rail yard.

Sjødraugur were terribly hard to fight, as their great masses of Rash-flesh made them almost as invulnerable as the Red Terror was, so the battle was long and intense. Fortunately, Sjødraugur were also quite rare, so when the rest of the grossling horde arrived, they were much more easily dealt with.

Since they weren’t falling asleep on their feet, Sigrun, Emil and Lalli made short work of that second wave of grosslings, and the third, and the fourth. By the time the fifth wave hit, though, they were sure something was up.

“Is it just me,” Emil said, frying another pair of wolf-beasts trying to jump him, “or are these grosslings unusually persistent?”

Sigrun nodded in assent and hit a small giant with a nearby building. It was old and crumbly, though, so the giant was only mostly crushed, which didn’t cut it with grosslings.

Right in the middle of the battle, though, there was a mighty thunderclap and a dazzling flash of light, out of which stepped... Emil. This Emil was decidedly _not_ the Firework, though; he wasn’t on fire, and his costume was totally different. He wore a blue outfit with gold stripes and carried a round shield with a pompous Swedish lion proudly blazoned upon it; his matching blue mask left his sparkly golden hair free to shimmer in the fading light.

“Flee in terror, grosslings, for now you face CAPTAIN SPARKLE, the SWEDISH AVENGER!”

Sigrun started laughing helplessly as she ripped the nearest grossling’s head off; the Firework couldn’t see what was so funny. Still, the Red Terror laughed her way through another six or seven grosslings, after which the rest had in fact fled.

While she was still giggling, Captain Sparkle came up to her and gave her a bone-crushing hug. Sigrun was about to object when she noticed that he was crying.

Lalli, appearing as noiselessly as usual behind the sobbing hero, ventured a _pat-pat_ to his hair, only to be swept up into the inescapable embrace. Lalli was not happy about this at all.

Eventually, the Firework was able to get Captain Sparkle to let the others go and to step aside to confer with his counterpart.

In the alternate reality from which the good Captain had just come, his team, the Norse Avengers, had recently been slaughtered almost to a man (Lall-Eye, the Winter Huntress and the Incredible Bulk were all dead, with War Mechanic and the Scarlet-Braided Wizard kept in protective comas after being Infected) by a dimension-hopping villain called... Törkeää Onni, Tuuri’s brother gone mad.

Too late to save his friends, the Captain had deciphered some of the madman’s tech and used it to try to follow him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to redeem Onni or to kill him; not that he told the Firework that. He didn’t need to.

The burning question now, though, was whether Onni had also come here, or had the Captain lost his trail?


	7. The Manchurian Heroes

“Are you disciples?”

“Yes,” the seven Heroes chorused.

Törkeää Onni stood before the Red Herring League fearlessly, knowing that they were his to command.

The Nordic Council had put the command system into place as the ultimate safeguard against the sheer power of the Heroes running amok--or turning against the Council. Expert mentalists carefully assessed the Heroes and then programmed them as needed.

He addressed Reynir first. “Play dead.”

The only command the programmers had bothered to put into the lowest-powered Heroes was the “Play Dead” order. Reynir promptly fell over, his muscles all falling limp at once.

For each of the rest, Törkeää Onni stepped in front of them, put two fingers to their forehead, and whispered, “Phobos”. This command prompted the subject to suffer terrifying visions of their greatest fear while they stood motionless and powerless.

Each of the rest, excepting only the Firework. Emil had been assessed as “most compliant” in the group, so Törkeää Onni had a special plan for him.

Törkeää Onni spoke the command phrases and awaited Emil’s acknowledgement and obedience.

Emil’s mouth worked silently for several seconds, until finally he said, “...No.” He looked almost surprised that he’d said it before repeating, “No,” and adding, “I will not kill my friends.”

What luck that the assessors had not bothered to ascertain how Emil would react if called on to go against his friends.

Törkeää Onni frowned. “Lack of discipline is its own punishment.”

Emil screamed as waves of pain ripped through him, making him fall to one knee before the implacable Finn.

“Are you a disciple?”

Everything in Emil wanted to scream _“Yes!”_ at Törkeää Onni. He could feel the weight of the compulsion like a horrible yoke on his shoulders, dragging his inexorably into line.

Just as Emil was about to break, he seemed to hear a voice say, “I can Help with that, if you’ll let me.” It was Reynir, stooping by Emil’s side to get under one edge of the yoke. Reynir stood, his strength Helping Emil back to his feet. What luck that Reynir was the only other Hero who could use his powers now.

Emil lifted his head, his bright blue eyes looking right into Törkeää Onni’s grey ones. “I _will not_ kill my friends.” He bit out each word individually.

The sparkles in the Firework’s hair became sparks, and Törkeää Onni had to take a quick step back as the immediate are grew hot.

Of course, the part of the conditioning preventing the Firework from harming the Puppeteer was still intact, so Emil stood there helplessly, his will still fixed on _not killing_ his friends.

As though in a dream, Törkeää Onni saw a spectral form of flame stride forward from Emil, grabbing Onni in a firm but inescapable hug before sending the flames to their highest pitch, disregarding Onni’s pain-wracked screams...

No sooner had one vision ended than another began. In this one, Törkeää Onni’s head was forcibly yanked to face a Sigrun who had given herself over to rage. “Talky man talk too much,” she opined before snapping his neck with one punch...

And another. Törkeää Onni was knocked to the floor by the adversary from home. “You slew my whole team of good men and women,” the furious Captain Sparkle growled. “Without reason, without cause. For this, you must be _punished!_ ” He punched Törkeää Onni in the face. “ _Punished!_ ” Another punch. “ _PUNISHED!_ ” And it went on...

After exactly ten minutes and twenty-seven seconds, the members of the Red Herring League came out of their states and back to normalcy.

Törkeää Onni was curled up into a little ball before them, sobbing occasionally but otherwise unresponsive. What luck for the League that his foresight powers had resurfaced just in time to prevent him from taking further action against them.

“Can you take him back to your world?” Sigrun asked Captain Sparkle.

*

The eyes upon the League duly noted everything and reported it truly to the Controller. He smirked. “Well, we’ve had Amateur Hour; now we’ll see how much better the professionals are.” He nodded at a nearby troll...


	8. The Trouble with Trials and More Troubles

Well, whatever the Phantom Strike had expected when he’d run into the unplumbed streets of Odense, it wasn’t what he found.

Amid an increasing number of grossling attacks (and the League’s own suspicions of who had slipped them the mickeys and why), they had been ordered by rather peremptory voices over the radio to proceed immediately on a sortie to Odense, where rumor had it that the ruins of the University Hospital still held what research toward a cure that Y0 science had managed before that stronghold had fallen. Kastellet and Amalienborg were to fend for themselves for the time being.

It had taken them upwards of two weeks in their slow but steady (but SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOW) FELINOPEDE to reach the outskirts of Odense, and Lalli was on his very first foray into the heart of the town. He was actually on his way back, scouting an alternate approach route, when he found them.

A great mass of thousands upon thousands of roughly fist-sized balls of sparkly golden fur filled the street in front of Lalli, and they were all cooing, oddly enough. The cooing got louder and more enthusiastic when the creatures noticed Lalli, and the closest ones began rolling in his direction.

Well then. Lalli hadn’t lived so long by being curious to the point of foolishness. He retreated a block or so in a blink, but the strange creatures just kept following him. They repeated this dance a few more times, until--

The troll was both stealthy and fast, so it was on Lalli almost before he knew it. He was the Phantom Strike, though, and so the split second the troll gave him to react was more than enough. He circled around behind the troll and stabbed it through the brain thrice in the interval before it would have hit him. It had just enough time before it died to look bewildered.

What really intrigued Lalli, though, was how the small furry creatures reacted to the troll. The cooing immediately ceased, replaced by a high-pitched squeal so intense that Lalli suspected it was meant as a weapon. As they squealed, the creatures shook and writhed, as though in pain from the troll’s very presence.

This could be very interesting indeed...

*

Back at the FELINOPEDE, Emil was starting to get worried about Lalli, so Sigrun challenged him to a trial of marksmanship to get his mind off it. Just as she did, a few small grosslings decided to see what all the noise was about, providing the two contestants with live targets.

Now, the Red Terror was good at making precise stabs and slashes with her blades, but for distance kills, she usually threw something large and heavy enough that precision of aim was less important. The Firework was similarly precise in close-in work and less so for distance. Thus, the match was more or less balanced, though Emil’s preoccupation over Lalli’s safety interfered with his aim enough in the early rounds for Sigrun to complain that he “wasn’t even trying”.

Emil was the first to hear the weird, high-pitched squeals from the direction Lalli had gone, but soon, even Sigrun could no longer deny that there was _some_ kind of really weird noise coming from the city... and getting closer to them by the moment.

Lalli appeared around a far corner, moving quite slowly, for him; the reason became apparent, if rather unbelievable, as soon as the little balls of fur poured around the corner after him. Emil eventually recovered enough to look over at Sigrun, and marveled anew: it was the first time he’d ever seen her utterly dumbfounded.

It was then that the furballs became aware of Emil.

*

It was a most peculiar predicament that faced them, and especially Mikkel, as he was manning the radio. Given his known penchant for practical jokes, who on Earth would believe him when he reported that the expedition had been halted by a pack of living hairballs that seemed determined to lovingly smother the Phantom Strike and the Firework (who was far too kind to try to burn them off and keep them away with his flames)?

Certainly, such a conundrum was unheard of in the annals of the Known World...


	9. The Wyrm Turns Purple

“MRIIIIIIIIIIIIIH!”

The kitty-shriek echoed through the grossling-moss infested halls, reverberating its way into the muddled brains of the Red Herring League. Tuuri and Reynir, poised to remove their protective masks, paused as the calico ball of fluff streaked over to them, yelping “Miu miu miu” all the while.

“...Kitty?” Emil managed through his daze. How had Kitty made her way here?

A nearby ghost picked up the word. “Kit-ty?” Its mouth moved soundlessly for a moment before... “Kit-ty!” The mouth twisted into a parody of a smile. “I... like... Kit-ty.”

One of the trolls leapt at the kitten, but with a cry of “No... hurt... Kit-ty!”, the ghost lashed out at the troll...

*  
 _Earlier..._  
*

“A garden must be tended to reach its full flower. Yes?”

The man they’d found “wandering aimlessly” in the ruins of the Bolbro neighborhood of Odense didn’t _look_ like an evil mastermind; this was among his greatest assets.

“Yes,” the Heroes chorused, looking at each other in confusion.

“Such consistent tending is a discipline of its own. Yes?”

“...Yyyyes.”

“The discipline of cultivation is one where Man shows his mastery over Nature. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Are you disciples?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

They were led through a grossling-moss covered building, still mostly intact after all these years, into a room that had served as a private hospital ward during the Outbreak. In their altered state of mind, the Heroes of the League could plainly see the ghosts floating passively over the beds where their bodies still lay.

There were trolls and beasts of various shapes and sizes in the room as well, though they avoided the haunted beds. A sudden realization swept the League like a cold wind: the mastermind meant to _infect_ Tuuri and Reynir...

*  
 _Now..._  
*

In a matter of moments, the ghost had swept the room clear of grosslings, repeating its cry of, “Not... hurt... Kit-ty!” all the while.

Lalli looked at the ghost solemnly. “Thank you,” he whispered.

The ghost smiled somewhat tremulously back. “Kit-ty.”

Then Lalli used his _other_ power, the power no one (not even Onni) had ever found out about, and sent the ghost where it belonged. In the end, it was only possible because the ghost had finally remembered something about itself-- “I... like... Kit-ty.”

Likewise with the handful of other ghosts, who had heretofore simply hovered by their remains with an air of disapproval; this feeling, based on an “Oh, that one’s doing _that_ again” memory, again proved the key to releasing them.

“Miu?” Kitty asked, rubbing against Lalli’s leg and looking up at him with too-knowing eyes.

Lalli was about to answer her when a new flood of grosslings burst into the room. There were far too many for even the Red Terror and the Firework to hold back long enough for Super Tuuri and the Helper to make their escape.

“MRIIIIIIIIIIIIIH!”

The kitty-shriek echoed through the grossling-moss infested halls, reverberating its way into the muddled brains of the Red Herring League.

With a _pop_ of displaced air, Tuuri and Reynir vanished, only to be replaced by piles of sparkly furballs! The grosslings reared back and fled as quickly as they had entered, leaving only the immune members of the League, the furballs, and the mastermind.

“Kitty can _teleport_ stuff?” Sigrun asked through her befuddlement.

“I... suppose... so...” Mikkel managed. His eyes went to the mastermind, now hunched over at the mounting squeals from the massed furballs, and a Grave frown appeared on his face.

“Not like that, Mikkel,” Sigrun said, shaking her head both to clear the cobwebs out and to reinforce her command. “Not like this: it’s murder.”

“He meant to murder Tuuri and Reynir,” Mikkel said heavily, not taking his gaze from the mastermind.

“But we’re Heroes,” Emil objected. “We don’t murder.”

“What would Tuuri and Reynir say?” Sigrun added, seeing Emil’s remark hit home.

What really put the matter over, though, was when Lalli came up to Mikkel, put his hand on the big Dane’s chest, and murmured, “ _Ei_ ,” in his usual soft tones. Mikkel knew as well as the rest of them what that word meant by now.

“Leave him to the sparklers,” Sigrun said. “They may deafen him, but he’ll live.”

“Unless his pets decide he’s better as dinner,” Emil suggested hopefully, picking Kitty up as they left for the FELINOPEDE...


	10. Higher for Heroes

This is what it means to be a Hero:

You are loved and hated, cheered and feared; sometimes all at once; sometimes by the same people.

Your life is not your own; it belongs to those you protect.

You fight hideous monsters sometimes, but mostly just grosslings.

You know people who went into the fire and never returned.

At some point, no matter how strong or fast or invulnerable you are, you _will_ walk into a battle you think you’re going to lose, because you’re the only one who can.

*

Sigrun Eide calmly assessed the ruin the grossling had made of her left arm as she faced down the Sjødraug that had followed it. The flesh was shredded and useless, but the bones were intact, and she had staunched the bleeding, so it wouldn’t be the death of her.

This kind of pain was a new experience for Sigrun, but she was still stronger than it; she had to be, for the others were all equally hurt, or worse. The Red Terror was the last Hero standing.

Well, Sigrun reflected grimly, now was the time to see whether she could beat a Sjødraug with one hand tied behind her back after all...

*

Emil was being smothered.

Somehow, Emil was generally still able to breathe when he was the Firework, even through the fiercest and hottest flames, though no one had been able to give a satisfactory explanation of how beyond, “He just _can_ ”. Now, however, his flames had died, and he was struggling for breath as a sea of halon foam enveloped him.

The others, bunched up in a group not far from him, were all freezing under the blast of the Cold Ray, but Emil knew that he could save them with his fire... if he could just get it to ignite.

He just needed to shield some part of himself from this foam smothering him in its bitter cold...

*

Mikkel was hip-deep in a field of corpses. The dead surrounded him, and he was the one who had killed them all. He knew every face that stared blindly back at him: there were colleagues, friends, family, and even a few enemies. All of them had had people who loved them and were loved by them; none had done such crimes as to be deserving of the death Mikkel had visited upon them.

The Grave Dane was a true enough epithet for him, for he’d sent all these corpses around him into their graves; it was unsurprising that now they had risen to drag him into his own grave.

Mikkel felt them clawing at him, trying to lift his bulk so that they could carry him over to the fresh maw in the earth that he could see close by...

*

Lalli was racing to deflect a hail of bullets spewing from an ancient mini-gun away from his friends, who were bound against a wall. There were _so many_ coming _so fast_ that if he made the least mistake, his friends would perish.

His body wasn’t solid enough to absorb all the fire by itself, or he would have thrown himself over the muzzle, but there were other ways to silence such a weapon.

Lalli would need to set the angles of the ricochet he was planning perfectly to send one of the gun’s own bullets back at its muzzle, but the need to deflect all the others kept distracting him...

*

Reynir was watching his friends and family die, and he had no power to stop it, for he was doing the killing himself.

The mastermind had brought Reynir under his control instead of making him play dead, while freezing the others in place. Emil had faced this same test and overcome it, but Reynir was not as strong as Emil.

Reynir’s primary power was _helping_ rather than anything big or flashy, so the body of Reynir under the mastermind’s control simply taped each of his friends’ mouths and nostrils shut and _helped_ them suffocate, while Reynir himself watched on helplessly from the prison of his mind.

Despair filled Reynir as the others fell over one by one...

*

Tuuri watched helplessly as the Giant she had been merged into ran rampant against a group of terrified humans. She tried to scream at them to flee, but her voice would not come. Instead, her arms and legs and other obscene appendages reached out to tear at their prey.

“jOin Us, tUuRi,” she heard the hideous whisper slither into her mind once more. “yOu CaNnOt ReSiSt Us FoREvEr.”

Closing her eyes, Tuuri set her will, no, her _entire being_ in negation. “I am _Tuuri Hotakainen!_ ” she cried desperately. “I AM TUURI HOTAKAINEN! I AM _TUURI HOTAKAINEN_ AND _I... AM... **HUMAN**!_ ”

Reality was no match for Tuuri’s will; as it had so often before, Reality gave way for her.

A great, unutterable rumbling filled the world. The Rash-filth sloughed off of her like mud under a high-pressure shower head, and “Reality Itself” cracked around her, the illusion it was proving itself to be shattering and falling away to reveal...


	11. Mish-Mash Lalli Dash

Looking back on it, Sigrun “the Red Terror” Eide was rather glad that she really _was_ invulnerable when “Super Tuuri” Hotakainen broke the Red Herring League out of the illusions into which they’d been shunted, as Emil “the Firework” Västerström was just the slightest bit… over-exuberant… in his response; this was completely understandable, of course, considering that the illusion he’d been locked into had him fighting to reignite himself against impossibly effective fire suppressors. It wasn’t as though anyone on their side _needed_ that troll-ridden city block for anything, after all, and Sigrun herself liked a fire bath every so often, as it tended to clear her pores.

Fortunately for those of the League who _weren’t_ invulnerable, Lalli “Phantom Strike” Hotakainen had been able to speed them all back to the League’s trusty HQ vehicle, their Field Expeditionary Light INfantry OPerations Excursion DEvice (or FELINOPEDE), before they could get caught up in the inferno. Reynir “the Helper” Árnason had been so euphoric in his realization that it had just been yet another illusion that he’d almost managed to catch Lalli in a hug; though Lalli had been able to substitute Mikkel “the Grave Dane” Madsen in the nick of time, the near miss had been jarring.

After this, of course, they’d all split up to try to get over what had just happened in their own ways.

*

Super Tuuri felt a sharp, cold shiver run down her spine. Somewhere on some other level of reality, another Tuuri Hotakainen—who might not even be named such, but was still Tuuri—had just died.

Super Tuuri had known about the vast complexities of the multiverse for as long as she’d had her powers; she knew, therefore, that among the infinity of other realities, there were many where Tuuri Hotakainen was already dead, was about to die, or was in the middle of dying (whether quickly or slowly), but that knowledge didn’t make the fact that Super Tuuri could feel when each and every one of them finally took the Birds’ Path any easier.

At least this one had gone of her own volition when the Illness had manifested itself in her; a few, a very few but very horrible times, Super Tuuri had had to take action to release another Tuuri who had become trapped as a result of her own denial.

But how would the Lalli and the Onni of that world hold up under this blow?

Super Tuuri sighed and acknowledged that she would probably never discover how her counterpart’s relations would fare in their bereavement.

“Miu!” With a pop of displaced air, a calico ball of fluff appeared at Super Tuuri’s chest level. Fortunately, the young Hero had good enough reflexes to catch the kitten before disaster could strike, cuddling the feline against her with a longer, deeper sigh that was yet half sob. Kitty always knew when her humans needed cuddling.

*

Emil was playing with the furballs again. This rather annoyed Lalli, as he himself barely tolerated the pesky things, though he admitted they made good allies against the grosslings; they were nearly as good as the cats in that regard. Even so, ever since the sparkly gold furballs had first buried Lalli and Emil in a cooing mass of affection that nearly suffocated the two of them, Lalli had attempted to ensure that the incident would never be repeated.

And did Emil _really_ have to look like he was enjoying himself so much?

*

Having finished off a few burnt-out troll nests to work the kinks out, the Red Terror was ready to face the greatest challenge of her day: dealing with Mikkel in one of his Graver moods. She’d briefly contemplated having Reynir _Help_ her, if only to try to negate as much of Mikkel’s gloom with his cheeriness as was possible, but decided against it, as the two of them needed to talk about certain things which needed to remain between the two of them—for now, at least.

“So, Mikkel,” she started off casually, “what do your bosses in The Circle say?”

The Circle. Everyone had heard of it, but what everyone had heard was always different from person to person. It was the most secret of spy organizations. It was just a stupid social club with delusions of their own power and influence. It was a legitimate advisory body with no real authority but plenty of moral authority. It was half legend, half truth, and nobody knew for sure which was which. Supposedly, the Nordic Council was the top of the Known World’s hierarchy, but The Circle seemed to float outside of that hierarchy.

Agents of The Circle were said to be under orders to kill anyone who found them out.

Sigrun could see that Mikkel had contemplated denying her “accusation” for a moment; instead, he shrugged and said, “I’ve missed my last few contacts because of our recent… entanglements, so I’m not sure.” He looked Sigrun directly in the eyes, his own opened almost to their full extent for once. “Certainly, they have been as anxious to ascertain just exactly _who_ is trying to thwart our mission and _why_ as the six of us.”

Sigrun relaxed slightly. “I figured as much.”

That out of the way, the conversation moved to their current dilemma…


End file.
